I can see that being true, but I've also seen good reasons to push back by saying "not my job": when you have a very talented or skilled person who _can_ do alm

I can see that being true, but I've also seen good reasons to push back by saying "not my job": when you have a very talented or skilled person who _can_ do almost anything, it can become very unhealthy and unproductive for them to keep this person constantly context switching and doing work outside their job area. Essentially, they are compensating for the inability of others to do their own jobs. The thing to realize is that just because you _can_ do everything, doesn't mean you _should_. In fact, I've even seen such people go out of the scope of their own work so regularly that they end up appearing to perform lesser than their peers (from the perspective of some idiot PHB of course), again because they're compensating for others elsewhere. In that way, it will actually hurt you to think of the companies interest first and not your own.